He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a time, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs. Musgrove was aware of his being in it: the work of an instant!
~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

12.01.2012

Well, drat. Today is my half birthday, which means
I should theoretically be through 15 titles as I only have six months to complete my self-imposed challenge. I've (obviously) been slow in posting
reviews, but in reality, I've read 10 of these books and I'm in the middle of
reading two.

I would, however, like to take this opportunity to note that I AM going to substitute at least one book from the original list. I'm swapping out The
Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning for The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan
Cooper. Both of these are big ol' omnibus collections that have been
sitting on my shelves for a while and both were recommended by people
whose opinions I trust, but since one of my goals for this whole endeavor (definitely not the only but one thing I kept in mind when drafting the list) is to
get to books that I "should" read while I'm still "young," then it would probably
be more important for me to read a classic young reader series. I've
read the first book in the series but I have four to go.